


Timshel

by heathenduchess



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Lagertha and Athelstan are bros!, M/M, Multi, Nanny!Athelstan, Sassy!Bjorn, Sassy!Gyda, Viking Family Feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:33:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heathenduchess/pseuds/heathenduchess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athelstan has just started as a visiting lecturer in the English Lit department at Kattegat State College-- he graduated with his PhD in Medieval Studies in January, and he's super nervous about starting his new career, especially under the disapproving gaze of the intimidating head of the English Department. It doesn't help when the women's crew coach, Lagertha Lothbrok, hits him with her truck by accident, and takes him under her wing. Suddenly he's babysitting her kids? And meeting her disturbingly attractive army vet husband. Not that Lagertha isn't also attractive...<br/>But then the kids' uncle comes for a visit. And...more uncles? Are Floki and the rest of the guys really all their uncles? And Ragnar's boss goes a little crazy...Athelstan is just trying to be a good role model for the kids, and make sure Bjorn doesn't accidentally set fire to the house TOO many times. But of course, Ragnar and Lagertha have other ideas. </p><p>It's just business as usual at scenic Kattegat State College, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children might be secretly trying to sacrifice you to the deity in the alternative religion they're trying out that week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Timshel

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment or feel free to send me messages if I get something wrong, or if you see mistakes! I'll try to update fairly frequently, but I'm not going to hold on to any particular schedule. Kinda short, so far, but chapters will definitely get longer...
> 
> I HOPE YOU LIKE IT \o/
> 
> The title is based on the Mumford and Sons song/East of Eden, in particular, this quote, which has had a lot of meaning for me so far:
> 
> "And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed— because ‘Thou mayest.’” - East of Eden, Steinbeck

Lagertha loves being out on the water with an all-consuming passion that often takes her by surprise. The wanting physically hurts; burning through her biceps and making her rub her gloved hands lightly over her jeans. To simply sit in the metal rowboat with the motor carefully bolted on the back and watch as her young charges slide through the surface of the river with broad, even strokes is torture when she thinks about it too hard. Even the newbies are rowing like naturals after two weeks of pre-season training. It’s 6am on a faintly chilled morning in late August—the first day of classes at Kattegat State College. Nevertheless, the team has been out on the water for a half an hour already, warming up and loosening their bodies. Their forms curve and pull, graceful as taut bowstrings, keeping time to the beat they feel rather than hear in one another’s bones as they row lightly upriver. The soft crackle of a coxswain’s radio is the only thing to break the silence. The girls pause when she holds up a hand, taking the opportunity to shuck off their hoodies and sweatpants. Lean and already sweating slightly, the sixteen women aged seventeen to twenty-two bend and stretch in the fragile shells, banishing the final vestiges of sleep-stiffness. The coxswains remain motionless, wrapped in blankets and warm clothing, puffed up like chickadees. 

It’s time for the first piece. 

Lagertha props a booted foot on the seat and stands, balancing easily as the craft begins to drift downriver with the current. Her assistant idles the boat, crouched and sullen, as talkative as he had been when she dragged him out of bed an hour ago. Lagertha brings her megaphone to her lips, presses the intercom, and watches twenty heads snap in her direction as a brief shock of feedback cuts through the mist. 

“Good morning, ladies!” Her voice echoes slightly over the humid water. “Now that you’re warm, I want us to work hard. We’re going to start with a two-thousand meter sprint to make sure you’re really paying attention, but then I want to work through pyramids for the rest of the time in increments of two minutes; up to ten and then back down.”

Muffled groans greet this announcement, anticipating the torture. Lagertha smirks, her full lips quirking at the corners. No one likes pyramids, which is part of why she includes them so often in her practices. Building up from a two-minute piece to a four-minute piece, to a six, eight, even ten, and then back down tests a rower’s physical strength and endurance, but is more psychological than anything else. Developing the mental nerve to continue onwards when you know that only harder work lies ahead is critical to winning races. Lagertha wants her girls to be as mentally strong as they are physically tough. She wants them to push until they think they can’t row another stroke, and then push more. She wants them to give everything to the river; to empty themselves down to the last thirsty drops. She yearns to feel that way again. Sex with Ragnar (hell, living with Ragnar) alleviates part of the need, but sometimes Lagertha wants what only the fight on the water can offer. 

She instructs the two boats of eight to line up as evenly as possible, and turns to her taciturn assistant. Bjorn, thirteen and perpetually bored with everything he is merely allowed to do, is slouched next to the tiller, determined to appear inattentive. 

“Let’s move to the stern, kid.” 

Her tow-headed son yawns, turning the outboard so that they glide neatly and wavelessly to the rear of the two shells. His indifference is an act—if she didn’t “make” Bjorn come with her, he would brood over the slight from across the dinner table all evening and then disappear for who knows how long with the dogs into the woods. They couldn’t find him only once, and had to call the police, to Ragnar’s black fury. Despite this, the child would be lurking by the truck the next morning, looking even more cross than usual. Bjorn had been driving the launch since he was eleven, and had begged her incessantly for weeks to teach him how to run the motor. He was mad for machinery, as well as for rowing—Lagertha is mildly afraid that one day he’ll electrocute himself pulling things apart and putting them back together again differently “to see what happens”. He's only lit the house on fire once, though. So far. 

Lagertha pulls herself back to practice, still upright, unfazed by the gentle rocking of their progress. Her light blue eyes, snapping under level brows, fixed on the coxswains. Often the lightest and tiniest girls on the team, the coxswains do no physical work except steer the streamlined racing crafts. The rowers are powerful and outweigh the coxswains by fifty to a hundred pounds apiece, but on the river, the coxswain is queen of her own eight-oared kingdom. 

Lagertha spares a moment of pride for the skill she has helped these two particular coxswains develop over the last three seasons, as she watches them skillfully maneuver their boats into racing position. They make small adjustments on the thin wires that control their tiller, hands plucking and pulling minutely, eyeing one another like nervous horses. Lagertha can see the unmistakable light of battle in their eyes, even from the distance of the motorboat. 

She raises her megaphone again. 

“Coxswains,” she says formally, even though they’ve done this a thousand times. “Please raise your hands. Have your crews sit to three-quarter slide and catch. When you are ready, lower your hands, and I will begin the race. The command will be ‘Attention, Row!’” 

Now she waits. Both hands go up. The rowers make more tiny corrections—the current is strong, possibly the result of heavy rains during the late summer. One hand goes down, then back up. The bow rower of the Valkyrie corrects her coxswain’s aim. Lagertha is patient—she taught her girls never to concede to any pressure to start a race before she is ready. Get it right and row it well, and don’t worry about inconveniencing someone else. You are the master of your craft. 

Suddenly, both hands are down. 

Lagertha doesn’t bother with the megaphone, but simply barks: “Attention! Row!” and the crews surge forward at her words, churning the water into sudden frenzy as they strain for the lead, the slender girls seated in the sterns verbally whipping them onwards. Their goal is two thousand meters downriver—a short distance, until you’re pulling a boat and nine teammates with you. But a good coxswain can find the fastest current, and the shortest route around the river’s broad curvature. 

Thyri, a sophomore, is a shouter. Lagertha thinks she might be a Women’s and Gender Studies major. Almost painfully thin and tall, with her brown hair pulled into a severe top-knot, she seems an incongruous vessel for such a loudmouth. She was a rower as a freshman—all those fragile, long bones held surprising strength—until she managed to break both arms sliding down a handrail on her skateboard. Instead of sitting out a season and returning to rowing, she asked, or rather demanded, that Lagertha train her as a coxswain. It was lucky that Lagertha likes a woman who knows what she wants and was willing to give her a chance, but it couldn’t have been a better decision. Lagertha thanks that damned skateboard and Thyri’s recklessness almost every practice, although she knows it’s probably wrong to be thankful for someone breaking her arms. 

She follows the two eights from a distance so that her wake doesn’t disrupt their progress, but she could follow Thyri into a pitch black cave and know where to steer. 

“Pull, ladies!” She shouts, voice booming all the way to the bow rower. On her, a microphone isn’t even necessary. “Come on, I can see the Valkyrie right next to us! I won’t have it! Will you? Will you let them take it from you? Take back a seat! Give it to me now!” Her constant, full-throated driving energizes her crew this morning, but they aren’t hanging together as neatly as Lagertha wants—the stroke seat, a senior who is one of the team’s most reliable pace-setters, is harnessed to a boat full of freshmen and new sophomores. The younger rowers often use enthusiasm in place of timing at first, until Lagertha teaches them better. Today, they’re out of sync, some of them even slamming their seats and backs into the oar handles behind them. Lagertha winces. 

Helga is steering Thyri’s foe the Valkyrie this morning. A diminutive blonde junior in the Art department, she looks like she should still be in grade school, except for the fact that she favors heavy eyeliner and a pair of lip rings called spider bites. She’s a quieter coxswain, but no less motivational. Almost invisible as she lies prone in the Valkyrie’s fiberglass stern, she grates out power ten strokes to her crew in an intense growl. The more seasoned rowers of the team are in her boat, juniors and seniors who know the value of hanging together as if connected at the spine by a single thread. Their bodies achieve nearly perfect unison. Lagertha smiles. Ah, zen. A boat of perfectly timed rowers make it all look effortless, but are exerting incredible strength to the maximum advantage. It’s all about timing the swing and the drive, like so many things. Swing and drive, find your partner’s rhythm. Hang together. 

“Give me that power in your legs—drive!” Helga demands. “I want a power ten! Take a ten for the boat, ladies. Don’t focus on the others, do it for the girl in front of you—she’s your teammate, you need her—give her everything you have! Ten! Nine! Eight!” Valkyrie pulls ahead of her sister craft by a bow, then a quarter length. Lagertha frowns slightly, remembering. Thyri’s boat is an as-yet unnamed new hull that was a gift from an anonymous donor a few weeks ago. Lagertha isn’t going to complain—boats are expensive and obviously vital to her team, but she likes to know where the equipment comes from. Being in someone’s debt gives her a tingly, itchy feeling at the base of her skull. She dismisses the momentary uneasiness— there’s plenty of time to worry about it later, when the girls don’t need her attention. Still, she’s determined to find out who gave the thousands of dollars necessary for such a boat. Kattegat State politics might be on a smaller scale than some schools, but they’re just as deadly. 

Valkyrie wins handily, but not for lack of a valiant effort by the unnamed boat. Once the match is over, Lagertha lets them break for water and yet more stretching before the promised pyramids. They don't know it yet, but she’s going to fit in another surprise 2K before the end of practice and make them sprint for a proper breakfast. Lagertha smirks again, anticipating the grumbling. She works them hard because they can handle it, and they know it. 

Her girls. Her strong girls. 

She feels a fierce swell of pride that raises a chill along the crest of her scalp, watching them pass water bottles back and forth. One releases a foot from her shoes and fixes a bandage on a blister, while another surprises laughter out of her partner with a wry comment—something about farting in the boat. They’re a better legacy than she had ever imagined—better than she deserves. 

 

Lagertha was the star of her high school rowing program. A small team, but nevertheless, her exceptional racing times drew the attention of the right people. At sixteen, she worked herself harder than she ever had in her life, and made the Junior National Team of 2000. Everyone said she was headed to the Olympics for certain. That was before the accident in her senior year ensured she would never row again, at least not competitively. She buried herself in her studies and went to college, embittered and determined to forget boats, rowing, and the exquisite rush of pulling an oar through the water. 

Still, she couldn’t quite keep away from the meets at Kattegat State. When the gangly, balding coach there learned who it was standing at the finish line screaming herself hoarse and ringing a cowbell she had stolen from the judges’ tent, he could barely recruit her fast enough. She didn’t want to, but he hounded her until she agreed, haunting her tentative workout sessions at the gym and trips to the physical therapist. He somehow found funding (Lagertha suspected he dogged a donor as much as he pursued her), and so she started part-time as an assistant coach to the women’s team, balancing it with her schoolwork. When she graduated with a B.A. in sports medicine, Coach Neil “Floki” Flokarsson retired to a life of recreational boatbuilding, although he still popped up unexpectedly from time to time to dispense cryptic advice. It just seemed natural to stay on —the school wanted her, Floki all but insisted, and besides, coaching was a whole other kind of rush. And then, there was Ragnar. And then Bjorn, and Gyda. 

They finish around seven, with just enough time for everyone to shower and get to classes starting an hour and a half later. She leaves the team captain, a capable, curly-haired girl named Frida, to ensure that the boats are put away properly and that everyone stretches one final time and locks up. The rusty pickup truck door squeaks when she pries it open, but Bjorn, already snoozing with his muddy feet up on the dash like she has told him a million times not to do, doesn’t stir. Lagertha rolls down the windows to let in the moist August air, and switches the radio to soft rock, speeding for home over the bumpy back roads.

It’s a small team at a small college, only Division III, but Lagertha has big plans. They’re going to be state champions before she’s through with them, her girls. This is our year, she thinks intently, knuckles gripping the worn leather of the steering wheel. The air smells faintly smoky, like summer is burning away to make room for fall. The tang in the air energizes her, and a sharp kick of victory-lust lodges at the base of her throat. This is our year. She inhales sharply through her nose, narrowing her eyes at the road unfolding in front of her. _It has to be._


End file.
